{"id":971,"date":"2018-05-04T14:21:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T11:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/?p=971\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T14:21:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T11:21:01","slug":"syriza-21st-century-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/syriza-21st-century-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Syriza And The 21st Century Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Book review by Albena Azmanova<\/em> published on socialeurope.eu<\/em> (

Costas Douzinas\u2019\u00a0Syriza in Power\u00a0<\/em><\/a>(Polity, 2017) carries a wondrous resemblance to Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli\u2019s\u00a0The Prince<\/em>\u00a0(1513). The latter is penned by a state official turned humanist philosopher; the former by a humanist philosopher turned an accidental state official.<\/p>\n

Both works scrutinise without moralization the world of politics at a critical historical juncture \u2013 the experimentation with republican rule in Italy and the experimentation with radical left rule in Greece, respectively. In both cases, the authors deem effective truth more important than abstract ideals. As they set out to expose the tensions between the logic of moral rectitude and the demands of public action, they advance positions that are in direct conflict with the dominant doctrines of the time. The insights into the world of politics are invariably delivered with flair and erudition that simultaneously seduce and intimidate.<\/p>\n

Three narrative lanes: slow, fast, and furious<\/h2>\n

In\u00a0Syriza in Power<\/em>, three narratives compete for the readers\u2019 attention \u2013 I will call them the \u2018the fast\u2019, \u2018the slow\u2019 and \u2018the \u2018furious\u2019.<\/p>\n

The first, \u2018the fast\u2019 one, is told by a venerable London-based Greek-expat academic who, to his own surprise, becomes a Greek politician to participate in the\u00a0skandalon<\/em>, the miracle-like event of the rise to power of Syriza \u2013 a small party hailing from the \u2018Eurocommunist\u2019 tradition.<\/p>\n

Here Douzinas, Chair of the House Standing Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations, speaks as ethnographer of everyday politics and reports with no objectivity or neutrality, as he admits, on the fall of the ruling elite and its system of power in Greece and the spectacular ascendance of the radical left. \u201cI left the comforts of pure conscience [\u2026] when I joined parliament\u201d, he writes with aberrant frankness.<\/p>\n

Readers are treated to a vicarious experience of Greek politics: from street protests to boring committee meetings and drafting parliamentary resolutions \u2013 a life for which an academic expertise, we are told, proves entirely useless (\u201cParliamentary life has minimal overlap with the life of the mind\u201d).<\/p>\n

We share in the parliamentary caf\u00e9 life of \u201claughter, bonhomie and anxiety\u201d of Syriza MPs who \u201ctreat the whole thing with a sense of historic responsibility and a dose of self-irony and deprecation,\u201d while observing across the hall the vacuous grandiosity of \u201csome sixty moustaches of all styles\u201d that dominate the lounge preferred by right-wing New Democracy members.<\/p>\n

There is even a spontaneous marriage proposal amidst jubilations on Syntagma square. The story carries the excitement of a suspense novel as we watch Syriza\u2019s \u201cunconventional government of hopefully incorruptible semi-professionals\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>fighting successfully, against all odds, two humanitarian crises \u2013 one suffered by the Greek population by dint of austerity policies administered by neoliberal elites; the other \u2013 suffered by asylum seekers by force of the failing EU common immigration policy. Syriza, in his account, handled both crises with a mixture of pragmatism and humanism that should be the hallmark of democratic rule.<\/p>\n

Within this story line, the narrative is probably at its best when it debunks the widely shared misperception that the Greeks had inflicted on themselves the austerity straightjacket through a combination of government profligacy and citizens\u2019 hedonistic indolence.<\/p>\n

Greek indebtedness, Douzinas discloses, is not a result of feckless indulgence, but of decades-long institutionalised practices of clientelism, nepotism and mismanagement in which politicians, industrialists and the media were complicit, thereby entailing what Douzinas calls \u2018state delinquency\u2019. \u00a0As corruption becomes a \u201cnormal state of affairs, universally known and widely tolerated\u201d, it permeates everyday life, with the infamous fakelaki (little envelope in which one places the bribe) being \u201cpart of the Greek lore\u201d.<\/p>\n

In more familiar terms of political theory, we might describe the Greek state as a uniquely noxious symbiosis of state failure (in which incapacity to levy taxes is a textbook feature) and state capture (public power overtaken by private interests). Add to this the recent reducing of Greece by the Troika to a quasi-protectorate, and we grasp the magnitude of the obstacles Syriza faced in fulfilling its mandate.<\/p>\n

The overarching lesson that emerges from the \u2018fast story\u2019 is, indeed, about the abyss between the presumed status of political office and power:\u00a0\u201cwinning elections is far removed from gaining power\u201d Douzinas warns; being\u00a0in power<\/em>does not mean\u00a0having power.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0\u201cWinning elections is far removed from gaining power\u201d Douzinas warns.<\/p>\n

The \u2018slow story\u2019 and \u2018the furious\u2019<\/h2>\n

The second, \u2018slow\u2019 story, is told by Douzinas the intellectual hedonist. With the vivid erudition for which he is renowned, spanning political economy and philosophy, he treats the reader to a feast of intellectual experimentation where Nietzsche\u2019s reflections on debt meet those of Husserl on Europe; Greek mythology meets politically subversive literature and film (e.g. Kafka\u2019s \u2018Before the Law\u2019, John Carpenter\u2019s \u2018They Live\u2019): this is intertextuality in bold action. If so disposed, readers might imagine themselves on a scenic Greek island, in a conversation with a local sage in a caf\u00e9 shaded by a 200-year old vine, where understanding relies on the unspoken camaraderie among strangers connected through shared texts.<\/p>\n

The third story, \u2018the furious\u2019 one is told by Douzinas the critical political thinker: it is the story of the rise of a radical left government in the midst of a European and world crisis, embedded within a dense reflection on the conundrum of \u2018the left\u2019 in the twenty-first century. It is a narrative about the capacity of the left to transform anti-establishment anger into a victorious battle for a more just society.<\/p>\n

In what follows, I propose to dwell in some detail on moments in the third story that help us discern the fate of the left in our times.<\/p>\n

The radical left in the twenty first century<\/h2>\n

Syriza\u2019s assumption of power in 2015 created a perfect \u2018Machiavellian moment\u2019: a radical left party took the ultimate risks that go with the exercise of power, including betraying the very mandate for which it was elected.<\/u>\u00a0The austerity policy that the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (the Troika) began imposing on Greece in 2010 fomented the public discontent that propelled Syriza to power. Yet securing the funds needed for coping with the humanitarian crisis that austerity policies had generated forced the radical left party to accept conditions of the bailout that were neoliberal in nature \u2013 from privatising public assets to cutting social provision.\u00a0 A public necessity required actions that the ethics of leftist ideology condemn.<\/p>\n

Syriza is now awaiting the judgment of fate: had it failed to secure funding for basic services, it would have lost office \u2013 reinforcing the radical left\u2019s reputation of being inept at ruling. Yet effectively solving the humanitarian crisis at the cost of abandoning left politics, as Syriza did, turns out to be equally damning: the left, once in power, ceases to be left. In the assessment of Slavoj \u017di\u017eek<\/a>, one of the most ardent and articulate proponents of the radical left, \u201cSyriza became the most faithful enabler of austerity policy\u201d.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Indeed, when accepting the conditions for the disbursement of its loans, Syriza radically departed from the 2014 Thessaloniki Programme \u2013 the manifesto calling for a reversal of austerity measures that was the policy platform on which it was enthusiastically propelled to power at the January 2015 Parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n

The verdict we pass on Syriza now is not confined to Greece. It is a verdict on the European left, maybe even on democratic politics altogether \u2013 on the capacity of popular mobilisation to chart a path out of the neoliberal quagmire. Has Syriza come to embody the\u00a0Failure of the Populist Promise,<\/em><\/a>\u00a0as the title of Cas Mudde\u2019s recent book announces? The jury is still out, and the analysis Douzinas offers might nudge the pending judgment of history.<\/p>\n

Here is the broad frame: our particular historical moment is marked by a wide and intensifying discontent with neoliberalism whose policy dogmas, implemented by political elites across the left-right ideological divide, have devastated the lives of millions of people. Syriza rose to power on the fury of the indignant masses. Its task, the task of any democratic political actor with a similar fate, is to transcend and expand the traditional left agenda focused on workers\u2019 rights into a unifying broader political imaginary, as well as transform immediate material grievances into demands for systemic change. The story of Syriza in power, as told by Costas Douzinas the critical thinker, offers a blueprint.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Oxi revolt\u2019<\/h2>\n

Let me begin with the most trivial understanding of Syriza\u2019s alleged failure: in a referendum on 5 July 2015 organised by the ruling Syriza, the Greek people rejected the bailout conditions of the Troika with a resounding No vote (the \u2018Oxi revolt\u2019).\u00a0 Shortly after the vote, the government accepted the bailout funds, agreeing to undertake drastic pension cuts, tax increases and other austerity measures, thus betraying the unequivocal mandate the public had given to it.<\/p>\n

It did so because it had no real choice, the familiar argument goes. As the German government official\u00a0Hans-Peter Friedrich put it after the 2015 election: \u201cThe Greeks have the right to vote for whom they want. We have the right to no longer finance Greek debt.\u201d But this story is far from complete.<\/p>\n

Even if Syriza was unable to reject the specific policies requested by the Troika, this does not mean that it accepted the neoliberal orthodoxy, Douzinas tells us. Syriza ministers and activists not only kept denouncing austerity policy, but more importantly, they enacted a programme of social justice (e.g. free health care to two million uninsured people, minimum solidarity income to the poor, the offer of a dignified life to refugees).\u00a0 This parallel programme not only mitigated austerity but it paved the way for a left policy turn.<\/p>\n

Douzinas is adamant that the reason why Syriza\u2019s gaining political office failed to translate into a rule of the left has much to do with the European left, and more generally, democratic forces, turning their back on Syriza. \u201cOne reason for the July 2015 retreat was the absence of a strong solidarity movement by the European Left and Social Democracy.\u201d Thus, a precondition for left agency is a trans-European and international mobilisation of democratic forces. International solidarity is not a novel idea for the left. However, solidarity is not enough; the institutional and economic entanglement among the member-states of the European Union, the imbrication of national democracies into the global political economy now demands active mobilisation of a broad spectrum of democratic forces applying pressure in a common direction against the neoliberal consensus.<\/p>\n

In order to secure such a mobilisation of forces, Douzinas urges the left to shed its facile ideological puritanism, to resist what Walter Benjamin called \u2018left melancholy\u2019 (a militant\u2019s commitment to a high ideal at the expense of action), and to assume responsibility for running a country, which inevitably entails pragmatic compromises.<\/p>\n

Politics at \u2018degree zero\u2019<\/h2>\n

Moreover, radical left agency is to be rooted in more than mass discontent with unpopular policies. Nominally, Syriza came in on a platform for rejecting austerity policy, which it effectively failed to do. Yet, Douzinas makes it clear that its mandate was much larger. Syriza\u2019s political leadership evolved from the cumulated protest movements and acts of resistance against a broad spectrum of acts of political depravity \u2013 it is in \u2019politics at degree zero\u2019 that political subjectivity first emerges; the overwhelming sense of injustice infuses the multitude \u2013 beyond class, age, and ideological divides \u2013 with political agency.<\/p>\n

That resistance was inaugurated by the two-week insurrection by Greek youth in December 2008 in protest at the police murdering the 15-year-old student Alexis Grigoropoulos, a protest that culminated in the occupation of Syntagma and other squares in 2011.<\/p>\n

Thus, what propelled Syriza to power was a popular will to break not simply with the life of economic deprivation imposed by the Troika, but with the neoliberal logic of humiliation and de-humanisation of which austerity policy is just but one element in the complex logistics of economic, political and moral devastation. The persisting popularity of Syriza after the \u2018July 2015 betrayal\u2019 should be understood in the light of this larger historical mandate. Breaking the grip of biopolitical control \u2026 Douzinas notes, is \u2018not simply a matter of parties, elections and governments\u2019: it is a much bigger struggle.<\/p>\n

Breaking the grip of biopolitical control through which neoliberal capitalism permeates society, Douzinas notes, is \u2018not simply a matter of parties, elections and governments\u2019: it is a much bigger struggle.<\/p>\n

To be able to win, the left must redefine its task beyond calls, as many now do, for recapturing the working class vote which it has lost to the far-right in many western democracies. Here, Douzinas offers an ambitious recasting of radical democratic politics along trajectories I will next attempt to discern.<\/p>\n

In and against the state<\/h2>\n

In our times, Douzinas notes, the left should not confine itself to resistance and rebellion; and the old reform-or-revolution dilemma of political rule no longer applies. The left, while assuming power, has to be both in and against the state, disrupting the institutionalised balance of social forces. The Greek case is particularly revealing of the magnitude of the challenge.<\/p>\n

\u2018State delinquency\u2019 is not an unfortunate feature of the Greek polity, it is a strategy of rule: \u201cState practice has consistently mobilized corruption and favouritism for pacifying dominant class tensions and micro-delinquency for keeping the people at bay\u201d. Subverting the vested interests that permeate the state is a precondition for enabling a ruling left force to enact its mandate.<\/p>\n

Douzinas notes with regret that this did not happen early enough on during Syriza\u2019s rule, which further weakened its capacity to carry out its double mandate for cleansing politics and mitigating the blow of austerity policy. Notwithstanding Syriza\u2019s particular performance, its experience charts the double policy task for any radical left \u2013 clean politics (e.g. anti-corruption, rule of law) alongside social justice. These are not two separate political imperatives; the former creates the institutional conditions for achieving the latter, for transforming a political mandate into an instrument of rule, thus closing the gap between being in power and having power.<\/p>\n

If the reform agenda starts with the full application of the rule of law, and the left turn begins with reducing the misery inflicted by neoliberal forces, the horizon is that of\u00a0isodemocracy<\/em>\u00a0or democratic socialism \u2013 the simultaneous pursuit of equality and democracy.\u00a0 In order to fight possessive individualism, and the aggressive consumerism and xenophobia that characterize our times, Douzinas pleads for the creation of \u2018democratic communitarianism\u2019 rooted in a humanistic ethos, with its three elements\u00a0filia<\/em>\u00a0(friendship),\u00a0filotimo<\/em>\u00a0(love and pride in honor),\u00a0filoxenia\u00a0<\/em>(hospitality).\u00a0 In order to fight possessive individualism, and the aggressive consumerism and xenophobia that characterize our times, Douzinas pleads for the creation of \u2018democratic communitarianism\u2019 rooted in a humanistic ethos \u2013 friendship, love, pride in honor, hospitality.<\/p>\n

These values, he observes, have effectively returned in the resistance, the social movements and solidarity for refugees in Greece and elsewhere.\u00a0<\/strong>Such a return to humanity and citizenship (values that have been replaced by commodities and money under neoliberalism) enables the left to cleanse Modernity\u2019s dark side \u2013 its propensity to subvert its liberating aspirations and twist them into what devastates humanity and nature.\u00a0 The union between the Enlightenment tradition of emancipation and self-development and the radical tradition of dissent and social justice can only be inaugurated by the radical left: this is its ultimate vocation.<\/p>\n

Losing, winning and abrupt ending<\/h2>\n

The overarching message of the book seems to be this: Syriza did lose the battle with the Troika, but it won a bigger struggle. It gave voice to a tenacious popular will to go against the predominant political common sense: \u201cOrdinary people created the historical opportunity by being well ahead of theory and party\u201d. Syriza\u2019s electoral victory displayed the ability of the radical left to travel the path from resistance and revolt to rule. It is the vocation, nay, the responsibility of the left, to proclaim that \u2018radical change has returned to the historical agenda\u2019 and chart a road ahead.<\/p>\n

The book ends abruptly, without a concluding chapter. Readers of the first story would wonder whether the marriage proposal was accepted. Readers of the second one might be disgruntled by a missing synthesis among the various morsels of philosophical insight. Those following the third one might still hunger for an overarching formula for the Left of the Twenty-first century. Such a concluding chapter would not only convey an unwelcome intellectual hubris, but it would be out of place due to historical circumstances.<\/p>\n

A Machiavellian moment is one of turbulent opening, it is alien to the closures of definitive pronouncements. And so Douzinas, graciously, offers no final verdict. Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. I wonder what Costas Douzinas might be up to now.<\/p>\n

First published on <\/em>Open Democracy<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*Book review by Albena Azmanova published on socialeurope.eu (4 May 2018) Costas Douzinas\u2019\u00a0Syriza in Power\u00a0(Polity, 2017) carries a wondrous resemblance to Niccol\u00f2 Machiavelli\u2019s\u00a0The Prince\u00a0(1513). The latter is penned by a state official turned humanist philosopher; the former by a humanist philosopher turned an accidental state official. Both works scrutinise without moralization the world of politics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,54,30,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-greece-en","category-left","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openathens.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}